The Buddha in Our Bellies

By Keith Robinson with Yoshiko Robinson

"To read Keith Robinson is to go on a journey. He sets you down on a river of in-between spaces, of knowing and not knowing, belonging and not belonging, of illness and health, and keeps you flowing along a current of evocative prose. Sometimes contemplative, sometimes turbulent and harrowing, this memoir is rich and full, and will carry you all the way to a great wide sea." — Traci Skuce, writing coach, The Writer's Journey; author of Hunger Moon

 

A mysterious ailment rips through young Keith's guts, while his relations with family and the world are fraying. His only hope for healing lies in the least expected, most vulnerable place. Yoshiko grows up determined to work for peace beyond her remote mountainside village and move past her family trauma of Stalin's forced labour camps and post-war starvation.

A third character enters these tales, paralleling and reflecting Keith and Yoshiko's stories. Twenty-five centuries ago, Siddhartha wandered the highways and forests of north-east India. He became the Buddha and his experience reverberates today. The Buddha in Our Bellies speculates on his childhood, his suffering, departure from home, fall, salvation, and awakening. His relationship with three remarkable women is told — his wife whom he abandoned, the milk-maid who saved him, and a grief torn widow who became his friend.

The Buddha in Our Bellies spans continents and centuries in stories of identity and belonging — where do we fit? Yoshiko's memoirs of struggle, hope, and self-reliance intertwine with Keith's journeys from pain to purpose, Buddhist tales, and poetry.

 

"The Buddha in Our Bellies is a candid observation of what it means to be human. With endearing sensitivity and wit it describes falling prey to a destructive ailment and honing the spiritual resilience to tame the beast." — Garry Hoffart, educator

"I feel this story. The Buddha in Our Bellies touches places in me that I recognize but haven't explored. This is the story I want to walk with for myself." — Sandy Bassie, poet and memoirist

This Boy's Life meets The Woman Warrior in this extraordinary journey of healing, dream, and history.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Pilgrims of Joy
• Release date: May 4, 2023
• ISBN: 9781738911516

Book preview

The Buddha in Our Bellies

Keith Robinson with Yoshiko Robinson

Sensitivity Warning:

The Buddha in Our Bellies tells stories of transforming suffering from Crohn’s disease and identity issues into fulfillment, joy, and fellowship. Both the suffering and the transformation have been messy. As such, a few descriptions of bowel movements and medical procedures are told. Readers might find these disturbing. The Buddha in Our Bellies also contains indirect, not graphic, references to domestic violence, sexual violence, and military atrocities. For privacy reasons, some names, dates, and locations have been changed.

Copyright © 2023 by Keith Robinson and Yoshiko Robinson

All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or in any means – by electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise – without prior written permission, except as permitted by the laws of Canada.

For permissions, write [e-mail]

ISBN(s)

978-1-7389115-0-9 (print)

978-1-7389115-1-6 (ebook)

B0C31B2CRF (Asin)

Drawings by Yoshiko Robinson, other than Vesalius print and map.

Original brushwork figure by Keith Robinson.

Design by Shida Studio Inc.

Photo of authors by Thibeau Nonier, Toulon.

Back cover gouache watercolour, winter walk, by Chiu Lin Wong.

Map of India by Black Pearl Film Works.

The primary text font is EB Garamond, a modern open source implementation of the classic mid-sixteenth century typefaces of the Parisian engraver and punch-cutter Claude Garamont.

EB Garamond is licensed by SIL Open Font License (OFL).

Special Elite font, used for Out There chapter and Sister Carmelita letter, mimics Smith Corona Special Elite type NR6. Apache 2.0 license for print, digital, and commercial use.

To our mentor, Daisaku Ikeda.

And to the thousands of dedicated people worldwide who devote every waking moment to relieving the misery of Crohn’s disease.

CONTENTS

PREFACE

INTRODUCTION

AUTHORS’ NOTES

EPIGRAPH

PROLOGUE

PART ONE

ORIGINS

I am a pilgrim

Taken Out of Paradise

A Green Room

We Are the Shadow People

My Stomach Hurt

Not a New Disease

The Festival

No team wants you.

The Swan

This Is Real

Inflamed, Invisible

The Asura, Inflammation Personified

Part of the World

For those who work for peace.

In the Middle of Something

I trust you, Yo-chan.

PART TWO

DEPARTURES

The Thinnest Hope

Siddhartha’s Departure

Students and Teachers

Out There

Siddhartha’s Quest

My Quest

Courage

My Fall

Siddhartha’s Fall

Yo-chan, we will meet again.

after-death in three verses

Ask for Yoshiko.

I Will Never Forget His Eyes.

The Striving

The Awakening

PART THREE

AWAKENINGS

wait with me

Mom and Dad

The Hungry Ghost

Lean Forward

Stephen’s Story

Coming Home

Gut Feelings

Yoshiko, do something. Please.

The Buddha’s Friend

Friday the 13th

Belonging

The Ferry

The Maestro

Gardening in the Loire

Blue Buddhas Make Me Whole

New Year’s Morning, 2021

The Hill

The question of the bench

EPILOGUE

MY GLOSSARY

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

RESOURCES

PREFACE

Crohn’s disease — isn’t that where you poop and poop and then you die? — a ten-year-old

People like you often get Crohn’s. — a doctor

I wish I had Crohn’s disease to lose weight. — a bulimic friend

Just remove gluten from your diet. You will be cured almost immediately. — a colleague

It’s all in your head. — more people than I can remember

You eat too fast. — Dad

In 1968, after years of illness, I received a diagnosis of regional enteritis, now called Crohn’s disease (CD). With Crohn’s, the body’s immune system treats its digestive tract as a foreign object.

Not a death sentence, the diagnosis became a life-sentence. Nothing could be done. The pain and exhaustion I endured daily would continue or worsen. The disease might destroy any part of my digestive tract, from mouth to anus. My body harboured a hidden rebellion against my guts, inflaming, twisting and ripping holes in them. My future was to suffer unseen as a drained, pain-stricken freak. How would I get through a semester, let alone a lifetime? No girl will want me. The prognosis was for endless surgeries, my guts replaced by a bag, dying of malnutrition, or a long, lonely torment, pooping myself to death.

What had I done to deserve this? I wished it went away. I hated my guts and myself. For decades following the diagnosis, I believed my situation remained not just unique but uniquely unique. That no words existed to describe my life with Crohn’s. That no one cares about my bowel movements, and certainly no one wants to read a book about them.

Fatigue from Crohn’s and other autoimmune diseases differs from normal fatigue caused by insufficient sleep or over-exertion. According to Harvard Health Publishing, For many people with autoim­mune disease, fatigue is the most debilitating symptom. . . . It’s a feeling of constant exhaustion that makes it hard to get through the day, let alone participate in activities. . . .¹

Writer and poet Meghan O’Rourke describes her own: . . . autoimmune fatigue is different from a sleep-deprived person’s exhaustion. The worst part of my fatigue, the one I couldn’t explain to anyone — I knew I’d seem crazy — was the loss of an intact sense of self.²

Autoimmune disease and CD can destroy our connection to who we are. The Buddha in Our Bellies is concerned with my transformation of both the loss of an intact sense of self and the physical experience of CD.

An immune system disorder behaves something like organ transplant rejection. In addition to the physical symptoms of Crohn’s, I experienced a kind of psychic rejection. We will see how the guts form the physical basis of non-physical qualities — courage, will, and foundational sense of identity. I also rejected my guts’ intuition and imagination.

I can not change the fact I have a chronic, life-long, often debilitating disease. Bu‌t my response to my sickness defines my experience. I didn’t choose Crohn’s. I chose my response. My future of pain, fatigue, and loneliness has become a present of joy and purpose, even a calling. And now I know: I’m not alone.

Let me set the table

As a kid, even if my stomach hurt, I set the table for dinner. That was my task, and I enjoyed it. It wasn’t all fancy, and I didn’t turn cloth napkins into roses, but I figured out how many forks on the left and whether we needed steak knives. We had a massive oak dining table with leaves. If guests were coming, I had to figure out how many leaves and, little me, open the table, carry the heavy leaves, and put them in place.

Often the family dinners themselves ended in family fights, but that’s not my fault. I just set the table. When people came over, I had to be extra attentive to what bowls and cutlery to put out and whether to polish the fancy silver. Spreading out newspaper to contain the mess, I used a rag and a tin can of Twinkle Silver Polish. My fingers worked the creamy polish into the crevices and curves of the old Hungarian cutlery.

Later in life, I cooked dinners for family and friends and clients and set lots of tables. I enjoy it. Once dinner starts, I don’t have to talk or be the centre of attention. Just set the table and people will figure out the rest. Let the conversation and the good times flow.

I became a sommelier. A sommelier brings the efforts of a sincere, hard-working winegrower and a sincere, hard-working chef to a sincere guest. We find a bottle that matches the three to the occasion and the season and company. We open it and pour it and get out of the way. Those times we get it right, the guest experiences bliss; we make memories. Lives change.

I became a manager and host of short-term rental properties. Travellers belong, feel at home, in the spaces Yoshiko and I create. They can enjoy a memorable life experience in a strange city, even for a few nights. The romantic getaway on the surface may be a last shot for a couple in crisis. A typical business trip might be a career on the brink. A family vacation might be the summer of a lifetime. All the pilgrimages of life.

Over time, I learned these skills. Respect the guest; anticipate their needs. Prepare every detail. Generosity. Latitude. Set the table. Pull the cork. Get out of the way.

As I learned to make room for others, I learned to make room for my own disowned character. Possibility and imagination have found space in my life. Hopefully, some of these skills arrive at the pages of this book. I set the table for you, dear reader. Set out these tales of hardship and uncertainty and possibility. Have a seat.

1. Fatigue and autoimmune disease, Harvard Medical School, Harvard Health Publishing, (October 14, 2022), https://www.health.harvard.edu/diseases-and-conditions/fatigue-and-autoimmune-disease

2. Megan O’Rourke, What’s Wrong with Me? The New Yorker (August 26, 2013) https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/08/26/whats-wrong-with-me/

INTRODUCTION

In my Book of Memory in the early part

where there is little to be read,

there comes a chapter with the rubic:

Incipit vita nova [The new life begins].¹

Dante Alighieri

We live in perilous times. Climate change and nuclear destruction threaten every one of us. No pope or president, guru or general, is going to save us. One way or another, we will have to save ourselves, live together, and share our beautiful Earth. The only solution I offer is connection. I wrote The Buddha in Our Bellies hoping to connect with one other suffering, caring person. May my story of finding hope in misery connect to yours.

The Buddha in my belly knows we ride this boat of life on planet Earth together; we sink, swim, or get to the other side together. My perspective is that of engagement with the here and now. I tried running away. It didn’t work.

Whether by nature, nurture, God’s will, karma, chance or choice, here we are. Rich, poor, healthy, sick, fearful, or foolhardy, this is us. We can’t escape reality; we may as well face it. We just might change it.

The Buddha in Our Bellies weaves memory, history, imagination, dream, mythology, and poetry. It shows how two people dealt with their reality and struggled to move forward with kindness, creativity, and purpose.

I was a middle-class Jewish-Canadian kid with an incurable disease. Unable to change my family or my illness, I sought a way to change myself.

Yoshiko grew up in an isolated village on the side of a mountain in Japan. Her father survived Soviet forced labour camps and her mother, a post-war refugee, walked across northern Asia. Although Yoshiko’s childhood was far from carefree, she was wild and happy. She longed to see the wider world, nurturing a dream to contribute to peace and harmony. Yoshiko wrote her stories and drew the book’s illustrations, except where noted. With her help, I wrote the rest.

A third character whose stories I tell died twenty-five centuries ago. Siddhartha was the scion of an ancient Indian agrarian clan. From his childhood on, questions of identity and purpose tormented him. All beings seemed destined to suffer in life and die without meaning. He became the Buddha, the Enlightened One. In his angst, courage, and resolution, I find inspiration and parallels. I also speculate about his relationship with three remarkable women: the wife he abandoned, who became a ferocious disciple and equal; the milkmaid who saved him; and a grief-stricken soul who became his friend.

I do not intend my tales of the Buddha’s life as a definitive history or biography. They are no more valid than any other recounting of the life of this amazing man. My accounts reflect my research, biases, experiences, expectations, doubts, and hopes.

The Buddha in Our Bellies will travel to forests of ancient India, witness a seventeenth century autopsy in a Swiss morgue, seek an unknown father in a cemetery in Queens, New York; get lost, sick, and hungry in Paris; meet outlaws, farmers, arrogant priests, a giant looking for a mate and a mission, the lonely, the forgotten, and the enlightened.

Since I am neither a medical practitioner nor a Buddhist scholar, my authority is only of my experience and studies. I am a spokesperson only of my opinions.

This book won’t tell you how to change your life, how to cure Crohn’s, or how to practise Buddhism. It will tell how our lives grew and of our growing belief that all people can change theirs.

The message of these stories: break free of limitations to become the person we believe ourselves to be. Here and there you will find my amateur poetry to convey my heart and guts, in places where the head is inadequate. I hope you enjoy them.

My life has been a quest, embarked on with unsteady steps. At first I longed for relief from pain; I wanted to be like others. In time, my quest took me in unexpected directions, to transform my self-disgust into empathy and fellowship. My path of restoration and healing began in an odd place: my broken belly. From my belly — charred, carved, and scarred — came the qualities of the Buddha, the highest self, my liberation. I write from my gut to you, from my most sacred intuition to yours.

The idea of a Buddha in one’s belly, of course, is metaphor, referring to our highest qualities being inherent within us already. Beyond metaphor, research is finding that the gut is the source of inspiration, courage, and core sense of identity.

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Neurogastroenterology is the study of our gut’s influence on our mood, health, and thoughts. Our digestive system, pancreas, and gallbladder hold our enteric brain. Food passing through the gut is still external to us. Only after digestion does it become internal, part of us. With roughly half as many neurons as the big brain, the gut constantly communicates with the brain and other organs. The gut sends messages slowly by releasing hormones, quickly through glutamate, and almost instantly by triggering the vagus nerve with serotonin.

The gut microbiome is bigger than the brain. Trillions of bacteria, fungi, parasites, and viruses in our gut total about 2 kilograms. The brain in our skull weighs about 1.4 kilograms. Research is finding how our microbiome affects our mental and physical health. Our gut health influences everything from depression to cancers.

The brain symbolizes the centre of our intellect; the heart, the source of emotion; and the gut, our intuition. The word guts means strength (a gutsy move) and intuition (gut feeling, a gut check). Research is learning these symbolic meanings have their basis in biology. As my guts found acceptance in my body, and as I found belonging in the world, I learned to welcome the intuitive, the imagined and wondrous.

And the Buddha? Who or what is that? The Buddha is not a supernatural being; neither god nor deity. Rather, Buddha was a real person who lived in India around the fifth century BCE. He gained the very human qualities of wisdom, compassion, and life-force. He believed everyone equally could access these qualities. Scattered through this book are stories of his life, his fears, longings, and hopes.

My unhealthy gut became my motivation to change and grow. From my guts, the source of so much pain and misery, emerged those same Buddha-like qualities of insight, empathy, and life-force.

Yoshiko and I practise Buddhism with Soka Gakkai (The Value Creation Society), a modern world-wide movement for peace, education, and culture. How we each came to practise with Soka Gakkai is told herein.

Buddhism and medicine, like most subjects, have their share of specialized language. I’ve tried to keep the insider language out. My intention was to use a minimum of jargon. A short GLOSSARY at the end defines my usage of terms. Also, at the book’s end, a RESOURCES page offers sources of additional information on Crohn’s disease (CD), hidradenitis suppurativa (HS), and Soka Buddhism.

1. Mark Musa, trans., Dante’s Vita Nuova (Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1973), p 3

AUTHORS’ NOTES

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This is a work of memory, history, and imagination, and is subject to the strengths and weaknesses of each. We’ve combined people into one character, and omitted many important people. Likely, others’ memories of these events are more accurate. We’ve gone to significant efforts to ensure the accuracy of the history. Any errors are our own. We hope the stories of imagination are the truest of them all.

The genre of memoir is growing like a wild vine in exciting directions and subgenres — lyric, collage, speculative. The Buddha in Our Bellies contains elements of speculative memoir, making space for the imagined and the wondrous. Outer events in our lives link to hidden inner realms. The Chilean writer Isabel Allende said, "A memoir is my version of events. My perspective. I choose what to tell and what to omit. I choose the adjectives to describe a situation, and in that sense, I’m creating a form of fiction."¹

All memoir springs from subjective memory, out of the unique perspective and interpretation of the narrator. We wish to share the meaning, not the events, of our experience. For in that meaning we connect with you.

With love and appreciation to you for reading these tales, from the Buddhas in our bellies, Keith and Yoshiko.

1. Jordan E. Rosenfeld, The WD Interview: Isabel Allende, Writer’s Digest, (August 27, 2008) https://www.writersdigest.com/memoir-by-writing-genre/isabel-allende

A great human revolution in just a single individual will help achieve a change in the destiny of a nation and further, will enable a change in the destiny of all humankind.¹

Daisaku Ikeda

1. Daisaku Ikeda, Quotations by theme — Human Revolution, https://www.daisakuikeda.org/sub/quotations/theme/human-revolution.html

PROLOGUE

The prayer bells are ringing

hurry, hurry, hurry

Leaves are falling,

the sun is setting

hurry, hurry, hurry

Storms are gathering,

Your hair is on fire

Your temples are burning

Mice are scurrying

hurry, hurry, hurry

Life is fleeting,

death is waiting

hurry, hurry, hurry

Time is a pyre

hurry, hurry, hurry.

Government Office, Los Angeles, 1975

After waiting weeks for an appointment, I trudged in desperate and unprepared and out of options.

Bare office. Three metal desks, two unoccupied. At one, I watched an angular black woman with graying hair working, with a telephone, a binder holding forms, and a couple of mismatched pens. Her desktop lay as barren as her flat expression: no notepads or in/out trays, no stationery holder, no lamp, no cup for stale coffee. No flower vase warmed the space, no photo frame, nothing personal.

Cold, functional space. I waited across the desk, in a hard metal chair, clueless how this worked, trying to get a read on her. For my sake, I hoped that eight hours a day in this humourless office didn’t freeze her every drop of care and kindness. For her sake, too.

Two framed pictures hung on the wall: Jerry Brown and Gerald Ford. Two Jerries running things; that’s kind of funny. Crack a joke. Her dismal eyes said she needed a laugh. My joking mouth opened, then shut. Another frame hung on the wall behind her, a certificate or diploma.

She opened the binder, grasped a pen. Those bony fingers held my fate. Tell me your situation, Mr. uh, Robinson?

I’d stuffed rent receipts, bills, an eviction notice, in my pocket. They stayed stuffed.

Yeah. All right, so, I’ve got no money, no food, no job. I can’t make rent. Nowhere to go if I’m booted out. I won’t even have a car to sleep in. They repossessed my car in the middle of the night. I hid the Pinto and pulled off the distributor rotor to disable the car, but they found it, towing it out from the bushes.

There it is, lady, that’s me. Most of it, anyway. That’s how I got here, towed out from under bushes. Now you got almost everything.

She scribbled a note. But you can work?

Work. Stealing car stereos and selling them. Stealing from John, Stan and Kathy. This wasn’t work. My pathetic attempt to obtain welfare crumbled before it began.

Mr. Robinson?

I have Crohn’s disease.

What’s that? A disability?

It’s a disease. Tell her about the hospital. It wouldn’t matter. She doesn’t care about surgery. No, simply tell her.

Are you sick now?

Bile rose in my mouth; a cramp began.

Speak. Don’t sabotage this. I’m sick. I need this; open your stupid mouth, you putz, and tell her. Not strong enough to survive on the streets, I’ll be dead in short order.

This place is not for me. Welfare exists for poor people, the girlfriends and wives of the guys inside. But I need to eat. Please, I don’t deserve this. I don’t deserve welfare. Show her. Show her my belly. Lift my shirt so she sees inside, the sutures coming out oozing. She’ll see the hole leaking puss, the hole large enough for her scrawny ice-shard fingers. Allow her to see my belly wriggle exposed and punctured, like a bloated, greasy fish on a hook.

Sort of. I guess not. I got out of jail a couple of weeks ago.

For what, Mr. Robinson? She leans back. Head tilted, eyes doubtful.

Nothing much. Scofflaw. My face tingled, hot. Bit my cheeks. Harder. That’s all this meant: a form to be filed, a file to be closed.

There aren’t any programs for you. She scanned me, a fish slice on display, a bastard bug in a jar. Then she put down the pen. You are employable. Any friends who can be of assistance? Family?

Been stealing money from my friends. That’s them assisting.

My parents are in Canada. The cramps spread from my guts to my thighs, then all the way to the base of my skull. Twisting in my chair. Nothing new about the cramps, but nothing I got used to. Trouble hearing what she said, but it must be some version of no. Gotta get out of here, clear out.

Canada? She’s closing the binder. You don’t qualify for Social Assistance. You are employable. Find a job.

I found a toilet in the nick of time.

PART ONE

ORIGINS

In the crucible

flames, pressure, exertion

preparing the void

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I am a pilgrim

I am a pilgrim,

wandering in lands strange and fair

Treading a new path

Treading paths well paved

Searching for them holy sites,

the sacred, the unnamed,

and the profane,

Searching for the whole and ripe.

Like a snail, slowly,

with home on my back

Searching for the broken,

the forgotten, the insane.

Once I was not a pilgrim,

those tired days I scoured every side road.

Is that my way home?

Craning my neck to see ’round every bend.

Wondering is home just past there?

Back there?

Knocking on doors,

"I think I may have come from here.

Mind if I look around?"

Wondering where . . . where was mine?

The folks I met,

some helpful, some not

— princes and priests and paupers —

None knew my land,

none knew my way back.

Many had advice for my way forward

—Take this supplement, read this book,

let’s get coffee, how yah doin’?

I met animals too,

but not very well.

Animals frightened me

— what they knew, their posture

Back then I was not a pilgrim,

but alone, aimless, homeless

One day I met a snail

— small, like me; slow, like me.

I quizzed the snail,

do you know the way home?

The snail did not understand,

for it carried its home everywhere.

Ever forward, never running,

carefully.

So, I became a pilgrim,

from fields away.

Treading a one-way path

— forward but with twists and turns

and long delays,

Searching for them holy sites,

new-built or relic

Searching for the whole and torn,

Like a snail, slowly,

building home for others,

Sometimes lost, forgotten, delayed.

Now I’m a pilgrim

from a foreign land

I seek the outcasts,

venoms and their elixirs,

the vine, all beauty.

Rumi’s ecstasy.

I seek microbes,

connections divine and bitter.

I’m a pilgrim of no tribe.

All my energy goes to roam this earth

Given wholly to wander this garden,

this desert, this brook.

Now older, perhaps I won’t shirk

from the animals,

perhaps take a horse as a teacher.

Taken Out of Paradise

Announcement, Kerrisdale, Vancouver, 1961

In his memoirs, An Urban Life Journey, my father described his Vancouver days as teaching in paradise. He pulled us out of paradise for a job at a consulting firm in San Francisco.

Dad gathered us in the living room of our Kerrisdale home for his announcement. He stood, pipe in one hand, scotch in the other, head tilted back. We parked ourselves to listen, Stevie and me on the couch, Peter on the piano stool, Mom and Rags on the floor, his curly red head in her lap. Dad faced us, his back to the picture window over West 34 Ave. Through the window, the spring afternoon rains paused. Our neighbour, Mrs. Campbell, gardened. Dad spoke a bit too loud. The students and faculty at UBC have been wonderful, but I’m eager to return to the States. A major research and policy study in San Francisco recruited me personally to head it.

Moving to California. Going somewhere different. Exciting. Stevie and Peter appeared serious, not excited, figuring out what this meant. Mom took a drag on her cigarette, leaned towards the ashtray half-hidden by Rag’s paw.

Too excited to stay still, I whizzed out to the front porch and yelled, Mrs. Campbell, I have news. We’re moving to the United States. Dad’s recruited personally. A hand on my shoulder directed me inside the house. Dad’s smile evaporated, replaced by his more usual disappointed face. I did the wrong thing. I was wrong. We don’t announce we are moving.

So, I fetched a suitcase from a closet to pack and began stuffing it with a lamp, my sneakers. What else can I cram in? My brothers, still sitting, glanced at each other. What a kid. Wrong again. Moving a family took more than a suitcase; moving means a big deal, bigger than a suitcase.

The Bogeyman

Over the following days, moving kept Mom busy. She packed and organized and figured out what to do with Rags. Paperwork swamped Mom because Stephen and I weren’t Americans, and leaving us in Vancouver wasn’t practical. She needed to sell the house. Strangers talked about buying and selling my home, while wandering through the piles of papers and boxes. And she phoned the school every day for Peter’s records since he skipped two grades. She had to arrange for schools in California to accept him so young and for his piano lessons. And what to tell us about Rags, about Dad flying back and forth to San Francisco and buying a house? Giant, important preparations.

Mom rarely mentioned the bogeyman, the bogeyman from the old country. When she did, leaning above us, she meant it. Or she seemed to mean it. With people coming through and me at her feet trying to help, she’d say, Ol’ Keith, if I trip over you another time, the bogeyman will come to get you. I didn’t see any bogeymen. She couldn’t be serious. But what if it came at night, in dark clothes and dark glasses and their enormous hats cloaking their mean face? Their mule pulled their dark cart with a cage and chains and a huge lock. Mom knew things, and Gramma, the daughter of a Hungarian princess, knew people from back in Europe. Mom sure sounded serious. Find somewhere to help, but not with the important things.

When Dad came back home, they fought. They fought about us three, the house. You bought a house before we received an offer here? In San Francisco without my seeing it? How could you do that? Both raised their voices, hardness in their tone.

Mom came from San Francisco. She loved San Francisco for its open-minded, progressive culture. But preparing to return home didn’t make her happy. Maybe San Francisco wasn’t so neat. She said, I am going to lie down for a few minutes, good ol’ Keith. The boils. Her face said both kill and cry.

I didn’t want her crying or killing me. Where to go, what should I do? San Francisco started sounding less exciting than before, but I couldn’t stay home. I tried being a grownup and leaving, but barely got as far as the corner house. They sent Rags to drag the escapee back, and besides, running away scared me. And I tried being a kid and crying but my brothers made fun of me.

Since Mom went to bed, I read Yertle the Turtle in Stevie and my room. I adored Mack, the smallest turtle; he stood up to the dictator Yertle. Mean Yertle didn’t scare Mack. Or, even scared, Mack didn’t care. He overthrew the dictator and freed the other turtles.

Also, Mom needed to finish editing and typing Dad’s dissertation. And, she said, she researched and wrote it. Farewell events and choosing a cover for his book kept Dad busy, too. He planned to take us for a clubhouse sandwich at the faculty club to bid farewell to the staff. But I came down with a fever and Stevie didn’t want to go and Pete had a piano lesson.

I didn’t understand research or dissertations. If I wasn’t sick, if I grew up, I could help, make Mom happy. But I was sick. My fever made me dozy, white sores in my mouth, and cough kept me half awake. I tried to stay awake, in case the bogeyman proved real and came after me. I pressed my loose tooth with my tongue. It hurt a good hurt and kept me awake, so I did that. I lay in bed with thoughts of being taken and something Dad said. Dad, being Navy, explained that on board they labelled items to be stowed until arrival, not wanted on voyage. That fit me.

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A Green Room

San Francisco, September 3, 1961

The temperature reached 92 °F, about 20 degrees above normal for early September. Mom arranged for me to start grade two at Alamo Elementary School on the 5th. I wouldn’t make it. I was sick with measles and quarantined for a few days at US Immigration. Everybody continued on ahead to set up our home.

I wake up. It’s hot. My head is hot. The air is hot and heavy, pressing me down. Pressing me